To wrestle with, and victory to complete, Then farewell to the Warrior's schemes, farewell That other hope, long mine, the hope to fill * There follows in the MS. which contains the above canto"On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life * Musing in Solitude.” (See the Preface to The Excursion.) 1 CHAPTER XV. DOROTHY WORDSWORTH'S GRASMERE JOURNAL. By far the best record of the life at Dove Cottage, and of how the Poet and his Sister spent their time at Grasmere, is contained in Dorothy Wordsworth's daily Journal. What I have read of it extends from May 14 to Dec. 21, 1800, and from Oct. 10, 1801, to Jan. 16, 1803. There can be no hesitation about printing a large part of that Journal, or copious extracts from it. It gives the most vivid picture of the influence of the sister upon the brother; showing howin womanhood as in girlhood-" she gave him eyes and gave him ears." From the Journal. we learn-as from no other source we could learn how they walked, read, and wrote together; of the visitors they received; of their frequent wanderings on the mountains, but more especially round Grasmere and Rydal; of how William and his brother John went to fish, and to bathe in the lakes; of how, in the evenings, they drank tea and played whist in neighbours' houses; of the way in which Dorothy's "inward eye” noted each change of the seasons, the fleeting loveliness as well as the underlying meaning of each natural object; of the circumstances under which each one of the Poems of these years was begun, continued, and ended; of those "moods of his own mind" which enabled him to complete one of them in a single hour, and compelled him to labour for months over another. We hear of stray incidents in the life of the dalesmen, or of travelling pedlars, who became the subjects of poems; of the books the household read, and the gardening work they did, and the details of kindly service rendered by the sister to the brother;-above all, of the interviews with Coleridge, his frequent visits to Grasmere, and Dorothy's long talks with him there, the Wordsworths accompanying him to the poet's trysting-place at Wytheburn (Sara's rock), and their return visits to Keswick, the arrivals at the cottage of Mary Hutchinson, of Jones (with whom Wordsworth travelled on the Continent), of Clarkson (the future philanthropist) and his wife-these, and a score of other things, are to be found in this Journal. It is possible that some may think the record too minute, and too uniform. Posterity, however, may wish to know more of these things than some of our contemporaries may care for them; and the very contrast of our present mode of life, and what is possible nowadays, with the routine in that cottage, may add an interest to the fragments that record it. It is easy to criticise it, as the daily inventory of the doings of a small household; but the Journal itself is the best evidence that the charge so often brought against the Wordsworths of self-centredness, or self-involvement, is much exaggerated. What more fitting than those daily records. of weather-changes, and of the face of Nature all around them, * One of the things we learn from these Journals is the immense number of letters that passed between the Wordsworth and Coleridge family, particularly from Coleridge to Dorothy Wordsworth, and from Dorothy to him, all written at the very height and spring-time of their genius, which have apparently perished. Many of Coleridge's must have been full of interest; but where are they? People don't write such letters nowadays. (See the volume of Coleorton Letters.) The very capacity for such writing has departed; displaced perhaps, in part, by the progress of journalism. They were essays rather than letters. To read oue is like having a long morning's talk with a friend; and when there were no morning papers, or morning post, what more natural or de'ightful? We may wonder at the frequent walks to Ambleside, but that was the post town; and to go there, in almost all weathers, was a regular part of the life of the householl at Dove Cottage. in the Journal of a household that daily looked on Nature with the "inward eye"? Besides, one of the chief lessons that the perusal of this Journal teaches is the wisdom of the "wise passiveness" that simply "watches and receives." Many and many a time did Wordsworth and his sister enjoy divine feasts of silence, in the mere presence of Nature, with no intrusive chatter of remark, no critical commentary, or aside;" and the chief justification of printing copious extracts from their Journal is the increasing need we have -in the haste and high pressure of our modern life-to escape into solitude, and to be alone with Nature. The perusal of such a Journal may be helpful to some, in showing them where especially the "healing power" of Wordsworth's poetry is to be found. It is also interesting as showing the way in which many of Wordsworth's poems were composed, the great labour he bestowed on some of the apparently simplest ones, the effort which their composition was to him, the actual pain it cost, and the repeated revision to which they were all subjected. Over and over again the sister records, "William wearied himself with composing." William fatigued himself with altering." "W. could not sleep, thinking of his poem." We find records of the poetic fire being suddenly kindled,it might be by a chance remark of hers, about a daisy, or a butterfly—and so long as the fit was upon him, so long as the inspired mood lasted, he could neither sleep, nor eat, nor attend to any lesser interest. But it involved far more toil, and even severe labour, than the majority imagine. Wordsworth was familiar with "poetic pains," although to him there was added the compensating pleasure "which only poets know." Another thing to be noted in the life led by the Wordsworths in that humble cottage at Grasmere is the simple and almost austere calmness with which it developed itself, and bore fruit. There was no rush of excitement, from an old to a new interest; no taking up of the latest fashion, and (as soon as it became tedious by familiarity) again craving "some new thing," urged on by the mere stimulus of change; and, in consequence, no premature exhaustion of the power of vision, and the power of enjoyment. It is the penalty, which a too early unfolding of any natural capacity has to pay for its premature development, that it exhausts itself, and satiety sets in. The Wordsworths were poor, and they were not ashamed to be poor. They lived for a great end, and they pursued that end through all hindrance, in all weathers (so to speak), and with a self-denial that was heroic. Even if we grant that there was some self-involvement; how, it may be said, could it be otherwise? They loved their mountain solitude, and found in it "blithe society;" and thus a type of character was developed, which for lack of these very surroundings of calm and quiet, runs the risk of becoming rare. As Mr Aubrey de Vere says profoundly:* «Talents rush to the market, the theatre, or the arena, and genius itself becomes vulgarised for want of that hermit heart' which ought to belong to it.” It has another side, however. There is no doubt that their long walks on the mountains, and the utter want of regularity as to hours for meals, &c.-perhaps an inevitable element in that poetic household-injured the sister's health. The records in her Journal (which are not published), giving signs of this, are most pathetic; and while her ministry of service to her brother is one of the most beautiful things recorded in the annals of literature, it may surely be said that the brother should not have accepted so much, and should have noted the injury she was inflicting on herself. But if she had not thus injured herself, we should probably not now possess See the Memoir of Sara Coleridge, vol. i., p. 52. |